


Give Me A Chance

by GhostWrote



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Gay Male Character, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostWrote/pseuds/GhostWrote
Summary: Highschool AU - Jamison Fawkes meets transfer student Mako Rutledge, and things do not look too promising. Surely the situation can't get any worse, right?





	1. Chapter 1

Jamison was completely, utterly, irredeemably bored.

Leaning back with his chair on its hind legs, he used his own two legs, crossed on top of the table in front of him, to balance himself as he teetered back and forth in a dull, repetitive rhythm.  
Absentmindedly, he fondled his phone in his left hand, only vaguely aware that he was even holding onto it. His head lolled limply over the back of his chair, resigned to the overwhelming monotony that was to be another painful high school day.  
Now exactly 3 weeks into his final year, it was all he could do to muster the effort to drag his elongated, slender form through the motions of the alternating monotony followed by drudgery - a unique combination that created _academia_.

His own witty mental dialogue brought out a chuckle from his too-wide mouth; a shrill, dry sound he felt leave his lips.  
He popped a single mischievous eye open, he twisted his body slightly to the left and regarded Hana, the girl assigned to sit next to him for Homeroom, who also happened to be one of his best friends.  
Unblinking, and with the tip of her tongue poking out the right side of her mouth, the young videogame prodigy smashed buttons on her handheld, very subtly keeping the game under her desk to disguise her activities. A glance towards the homeroom teacher confirmed his suspicious that the teacher was completely beyond the realm of caring, making occasional neck-twists towards the clock, but otherwise remaining preoccupied with his own phone.

A twitchy, piercing amber eye settled back upon Hana, and she let out an exaggerated shudder in return. Always ready to slice someone open with her on-point commentary, the girl seemed to delight in taking every opportunity to tease, critique, and banter.  
She was one of the only people Jamison had ever known who was willing to push every boundary in her efforts to unrelentingly tease her friends, to the extent that those outside of the friend group thought of her as somewhat abrasive.  
Many an unsuspecting adolescent at this academy had experienced her harsh humour, usually leaving a train of dented egos in its wake.

Jamison loved her for it.  
  
Her brown eyes lifted from her game and met his. She continued to button-mash freely without seeing the screen, but Jamison was sure that she was maintaining her in-game performance perfectly. He made sure not to let his features show that he was impressed; that would only give her more ammunition to use against him.

“So, Rattttttt.” 

Dragging the word out slowly felt more like an old, affectionate ritual; she knew better than to think that she’d be able to drag him with that quality of joke.

“How was your English test? Heard you did even better than you expected. Was your family happy?” He felt his face scrunch up involuntarily at that, cracking his second eye open at last and fixing her what he’d intended as a withering stare. Clearly, Hana was in the mood to pull no punches, and the smirk on her face showed that she’d read him like a book. Still, Jamison was an expressive sort. Getting a reaction from him was essentially the low-hanging-fruit of bullying, but Jamison couldn't pretend that he didn’t love their verbal abuse-centred relationship.

“So, Hanaaaaa.” He echoed her own initiation back to her, mockingly. She pretended to screw up her face as if hurt, and her engagement encouraged him.

“I was watching your stream last night. Saw some pretty, uh, interesting comments from the text-to-speech system you’ve got going. Sounds like there were a lot of offers, how many people _did_ you agree meet up with this week?” This time, her face screwing up was much more genuine.

“That’s gross! You’re completely sick, _byuntae_!” came her breathless exclamations, while her bright, soaring laughter punctuating each of her syllables. Her final word was gibberish to him, but he felt confident from her tone that he could deduce what her Korean expression had meant.

Hana had an incredibly warm personality. Jamison could understand how she’d managed to shatter approximately one thousand hearts within the school, and how she’d captured so much love as a streaming celebrity.

“You know, Hana, we should definitely get married,” .

She cocked an eyebrow at that, making him quickly jump in to defend himself.

“Hey, wait, wait! Hear me out; so, we should get married, because I have a lot of wit and redeeming qualities, and I think you need someone stable like me in your life”.

Her laugh came once again, in its own sing-song way. It was always easy to tell when she was genuinely happy.

“What? Since when have you ever been anything close to stable? Besides; I don’t think so, Rat. I think that we both know I’m a few points outside your league, and you’re a more hands-on, tool-focused sorta guy; I just don’t have the tool that you'd need to make this work!”

She smirked at her own double-entendre, while Jamison feigned indignity, recoiling backwards and threatening to make his chair pitch over, as if stung by her words.

“Hana, you wound me! Beneath my musky, dirty exterior, I’ll have you know that I have a heart of gold, the purest intentions, and an award-winning personality that’ll make your parents proud! Besides, I’m sure I could do better! I don’t need to settle for any old diva, there’ll be more opportunities for me!” 

There was a moment of pause, and then Hana blinked few times in rapid succession, as if she'd been stunned by Jamison's verbal onslaught.

“Ratttttt.” She droned, dismissing all of his words in one elongated syllable.

“Divaaa.” He shot backwards, irate now from her trademark tease.

“Rattttt.”

“Diva!”

“For the love of god, please stop.” Intoned a voice from the front.

“I know you don’t want to be here, but neither do I; so if I’m going to suffer through homeroom with you two every day for the rest of this year, at least keep it down!”.

Both Jamison and Hana had directed their eyes to the front of the class, where their teacher now sat, fuming and with a look of resentment locked upon them.  
Without looking at the rest of the class, Jamison could tell that all eyes were directed their way – clearly, his penchant for loudness had brought the class’ attention with it, incurring the wrath of the teacher unlucky enough to be assigned to their antics.

Putting his hand to his head in a vague, sarcastic semblance of a salute, he exclaimed powerfully –

“Righto sir, I’ll be on me best behaviour!” The teacher just returned a disbelieving look his way, muttering softly to himself while checking the progression of the clock with a freshly renewed enthusiasm.

“Oh, by the way!” Jamison turned to face Hana as she began to speak again, both of them already forgetting about their collective reprimanding and ready for more banter.

“Speaking of people you’re never going be able to hook up with, have you seen the new transfer kid in our grade?”.

That perked his interest. He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard about this, since the average Monday morning was not likely a time where he'd be paying any sort of attention. That said, having students transfer out their way, especially during the last year of school, was extremely uncommon. Jamison liked to think of himself as in-the-loop, and his obliviousness clearly did him a great injustice.  
Hana was able to deduce all of this instantly from the blank stare that had overcome Jamison’s face.

“I overheard from some of the kids in the hall talk about him,” She continued,

“Said that he looks like a real chunky-sporty type, the sorta beat-your-ass line-backer that I can tell you’re going to try and get your teeth kicked in by.”

Jamison was entranced now.

“You know me too well. More, tell me more.”

The smirk on her face returned.

“Well, first off, they said he’s realllllly big. Super tall, super stocky. Scared some of the younger kids out in the hall, saw them scampering away.” Jamison nodded intently, soaking up her information.

“Promising. Give me details; how’s he look? What’s he do? Why’d he decide to swing into our school all unannounced?”

“Sorry! No more details for you!”

The electronic ringing of a class bell echoed around the room, and Jamison had to desperately scramble not to topple off his chair as he became startled from the unexpected noise.

When he'd regained his composure, he once more locked on to Hana with his trademark over-intensity.

“What? Why not?! You’ve only just got me interested!” Jamison stood up from his (now-grounded) seat and began to proclaim, as Hana gracefully stood to match him.  
He looked downwards towards her, oblivious to the homeroom teacher rushing out of the class to escape their unrelenting prattling.

“I haven’t actually seen him, Rat. Just heard what a couple of others were saying. If I’d found him, I’d have snapped you some pictures. I’m not one to stand in the way of your inevitable ass-kicking from another giant straight boy.” Her eyes stayed on his face, but they weren’t so mirthful this time.

Jamison briefly entertained the thought of brushing off her concerns, but decided to reassure her instead.

“Hey, come on, don’t be all worried! That was a one-off ass kicking, just what I needed to build character! I learnt some valuable lessons, matured as a person, and now I’m better for it!”

Jokes usually worked best in situations like this for Jamison – he wasn’t one for heartfelt admissions, especially not in line with the topic she was broaching now, and he was sure that she’d be able to read between the lines.

He was right. With a huff and a shrug of her shoulders, she let the seriousness drop.

“Fine. But when the inevitable ass-kicking does come around, you’ve gotta let me know about it – if you’re going to get hurt again, someone else is going to get hurt as well this time.” Jamison let out another dry cackle as they headed towards the class exit.

“Of course. It’ll make for a great stream highlight; think of all the sponsors you’ll get!”

* * *

He was now approaching the second half of his construction class, and the absolute dragging pace of a subject that failed to understand his brilliance had effectively stripped him of the will to live.

“Sir, this _is_ practical application! I made a few modifications to the areas you recommended, and now if it goes off, there’d be some real explosive force behind it! I can show you-”

“No! That, uh, won’t be necessary Jamison”, interjected the stocky engineering teacher; an unreasonable man obsessed with maintaining the rules and ensuring that Jamison's talent would never be able to prosper.

“Look, how about this; if you can take it back to your workstation and undo the modifications you made cleanly, I won’t report to the administration that you effectively just created a bomb in my class.”

Jamison’s frown tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Of course I can undo it, but then it’d be useless! What’s the point to that?”

“The point, was to make a _clock_. I can see that you’ve already got a mastery over… creativity and imagination, so how about just finishing the actual assignment before we get ahead of ourselves?”

_So, that’s how it’s gunna be._

Jamison felt bitter, unsure why he was being treated like some sort of an idiot. He was great at tinkering; none of these old professors would be able to keep up with him. Sure, he wasn’t too great at focusing or following directions, but that wasn’t his fault.

With a weary sigh and slumped shoulders, Jamison trotted his way back over to his workstation, to begin the painful work of destroying something great that he’d just created – a ritual he had become accustomed to in all of the classes he'd ever taken involving construction. The bell for the first period rang, meaning that they’d now have a 10-minute break before they’d have to continue working.  
Everyone began to shift outside, for quick bathroom breaks, collecting gear from their lockers, or just talking shit outside the range of the teacher. He stayed, of course. Even deconstructing something gave him something to do with his hands, and he knew well enough that by the time for math in his later periods, he’d be wishing he still had something to tinker with; so he took full advantage while he could.

A few minutes into his work, he heard the teacher speaking with someone further away from where he was working; a deep voice in the background that was muted by the distance. Listening without really paying attention, he heard some vague explanations about lateness, some talk of having to take care of other things, and a few more inconsequential details - none of which Jamison found himself caring about in the slightest.  
Still lost in his negativity from having to unravel his precious work, he was abruptly shaken from his moping by a flash of pain burning across the back of his hand left.

“Mother _fucker!_ ” he cried out in pain and shock, shaking his hand and sending some droplets of blood flying around. A pool of red surrounding the sharp tool he’d been using confirmed what he’d thought – while preoccupied with his thoughts, he’d slipped and dragged it across his other hand, cutting it open.

Biting lis lip in frustration and squinting his eyes to hold back reflexive tears, he pulled his hand up closer to his face to examine the damage. 

The cut wasn’t very deep, but it was relatively long, and was deceptively painful. The blood wouldn’t stop dripping down towards his wrist, so with an angry stomp in his step, he pounded towards the teacher’s desk, where he knew from his previous mishaps that a first aid kid was bound to be kept.

“Oi teacher, you didn’t do too great a job supervising-”. Just as Jamison had begun his witty rant, he clamped his jaw shut and ended his tirade prematurely at the sight that was in front of him, a massive, hulking form which obstructed his view from the other side of the teacher's desk.  
Jamison was pretty tall by his own standards – he towered over almost all of his classmates and the majority of his teachers due to early growth spurts.

But this guy? He looked up at him now to make eye contact, shocked at the almost full head of height that he had on him still.  
Jamison stood quiet and unmoving, knowing for certain that he'd never laid eyes on this person before. He had a visibly young face, and Jamison was certain he would've been aware if this person stepped within a 1km distance of him.

_Must be the new transfer kid._ He thought to himself. 

Somewhere in the distance he heard sounds that almost took the shape of words, and as he began to concentrate again, became aware that these noises were the sounds of his teacher’s fussing - they invaded his mind, and distracted him quickly from the figure he'd been taken aback by.

“…swear, for how good you are with those tools, you’re downright the clumsiest kid that I’ve ever taught before. One of these days you’re going to get yourself real hurt if you don’t pay better attention. Come on, give me your hand and let me patch it up.” With that, his teacher gave a short gesture towards himself, waiting for Jamison to comply.

Reluctant to put his wellbeing in the hands of a teacher (who had already shown himself to be incompetent in the realm of obvious engineering opportunities), Jamison surrendered his hand, whilst listening with a wince to the popping sound of the medical kit; a sound that indicated there was soon to be incoming pain.  
A few moments later, a he recognised a damp, dabbing feeling on top of the cut- and then immediately bit back some choice curse words as the sharp pain of disinfectant left his body involuntarily shuddering in response.

A light, scoffing sound came from a bit to his left, and he noticed that the giant from before wore a small smirk on his face as he watched the suffering unfold. Jamison’s pride quickly scrunched like a stress ball inside him; he wouldn’t allow this stranger to get away with that.

“What, do we got a voyeur here? Enjoying watching me shake, pervert?” He twisted his hips and adopted a lewd, seductive stance, hoping to look both provocative in all the right ways to piss someone off.

“Jamison!" He felt the pressure on his hand intensify and he winced. 

"At least pretend to have some class when you're in front of your teachers, for God's sake!" Came the immediate, expected response from the seated figure wrapping his wound, and he winced again as he felt his hand roughly being bandaged – with less caution than before, leaving him feeling a bit bashful about his outburst.  
Looking back towards the taller new kid, he tried to avoid cringing at the dark, unimpressed expression that greeted him.  
Jamison wasn’t one to back down from confrontation, though. He met those angry eyes back with his own implacable stare, issuing an unspoken challenge.

After a few tense moments, tall boy’s eyes dulled slightly, as if bored. He turned towards the teacher.

“Am I good?”

“Uh, yeah,” came the uncomfortable-sounding response. Clearly, the tension had been visible.

“You’re good to go.”

And with that, the tall boy turned and walked back out the classroom door, leaving just as the bell rang again, signalling for students to begin to unenthusiastically shuffle their way back inside.  
Jamison looked up, trying to really take in any of his features as he headed off, and managed to notice a bleached-white ponytail growing more distant, before passing the window and escaping from his view. With a shake of his head, he returned to his workstation, by now oblivious to the pain that was in his hand.  
Leaning up against the wall, he was aware of the teacher beginning his lecture, but was too detached to pay attention to any of the words that were coming out.

All he could think about were those dark eyes, and the intensity that they lit up with when Jamison tried to bait him into a confrontation.  
He felt a little bashful that he’d already gone against Hana’s wishes, and probably set himself up for a later ass-kicking.

…Mostly though, he just felt a tinge of regret from being so snappy. Maybe he’d been in the wrong here; but only a little, honest.

* * *

AN:// I haven’t written in an extremely long time, so I feel very rusty, sorry! Dialogue feels extremely painful for me after having not written it properly in years. I can tell it’s going to take a while for me to get used to it. I know Hana’s Korean word “Byuntae” (pervert) is pronounced more like “Pyeontae” in actual Korean, I wasn’t sure which way is preferred for writing in foreign languages. Sorry if you’re a native speaker and you prefer the other way .-.

Also omg learning to format my writings so that they don't look weird when I post them here is so hard, it took forever. Feel free to leave feedback/criticism/say whatever you want though, I haven't published anything online since I was a really young kid so this is very new to me and I'm open to advice. Hope you enjoyed the first chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

Jamison was an imaginative sort, and he’d found that his creative processes had helped him in a lot of different ways over the years. He could always find an alternative way out of almost any situation, excluding the few times where he’d had an inevitable ass-kicking coming his way, and he took great pride in his ability to tinker and create a whole variety of things that he doubted others would have even begun to imagine.

That said, he was constantly at a loss as to how his mental projections of how painfully exhausting maths class was going to be, never seemed to be able to capture the full-blown, brain-numbing agony that he experienced whilst sitting down in the class itself.

To say that he was anything other than a genius was surely blind ignorance; he had such a mind that could not be contained within the rigid definitions of a high school's expectations of ‘intelligence’, and he refused to pretend that his teacher’s expectations to match were of any value to him.

Content with himself for his rationalisation, he lifted his head from his desk, where he had only a minute ago let it plunk in defeat, and stared at the whiteboard in front of him, with it’s simple equations and scrolling numbers laid bare, ready to expose their secrets to him at last.

…

_Nope_.

He thought briefly, before letting his head crash back down into the desk with an abrupt bang.

Despite his most eloquent of self-inspiring pep talks, the simple fact of the matter was that Jamison simply didn’t get maths, not at all.

It wasn’t that he was stupid, he could guess the answer to mechanical and chemistry practical work just fine whenever he was tinkering; but the issue was that he was limited to what was essentially _guessing_. He’d gained the knowledge he had through a thousand attempts of risky trial-and-error each; he just didn’t have the sort of mind that’d let him work through anything precise or measured.

He could understand the numbers on their own, sure, but putting those numbers with other numbers?

_Nah thanks mate_ , he dismissed the mere concept from his mind listlessly,  
  
_This voodoo magic is just way out of my pay grade._

A purposeful prodding began to force down on his right arm above the bicep, a brief pressure intensifying and then receding again.  
Rolling his head to the side to focus on the other direction of his desk, for the second time that day he peaked a single eye open to find out what sort of distractions were occurring around him. 

The sight of Lúcio prodding his arm was not unexpected to Jamison – as one of his oldest friends, predating the beginning of high school, Lúcio would normally be someone that Jamison would be relying on to perk him up from this unrelenting hell of a classroom.

However, in consideration of the awful construction class that he’d managed to stumble his way through earlier, Jamison had already completely written off the day and was instead waiting for the school day to come to its conclusion; so that he could bail completely and return home to hibernate, giving him back to the will to once more return to, and endure, such a draining class.

“I know I’ve heard you whine about math for the last decade, but none of this is really that hard, Jamie”.  
  
The normal tones of banter would’ve been welcome, as common a routine for the two of them as it was – but today instead, all it did was try the limits of Jamison’s patience.  
  
“Not in the mood, Luc. Math is the work of the devil, my hand hurts from engineering because the teacher can’t supervise, and the new kid’s a write-off arsehole."

Lúcio rolled his eyes, apparently not keen on entertaining Jamison’s self-hosted pity party.

“I’ll concede math, but your hand hurts because you probably stopped paying attention and got distracted like you always do. And who’s the new kid anyways? You already met him?” 

Jamison pushed himself from the desk into a proper upright seating position, using his uninjured hand.

“You bet I met him! All big and strong and tall and thinking he was better than me, all deep voiced and smirking at me when I was getting my hand patched up!”

His face became a sour grimace as he heated up, feeling passionately spiteful towards the person who’d had the audacity to go against- 

“So, did you actually talk to him?”

…

A dull silence followed now that Jamison had been pulled from his spiralling thoughts. When a few seconds had passed, Lúcio clicked his tongue expectantly.

Jamison relented.  
  
“Well, we didn’t _talk_ talk, but he was smiling when I hurt my hand and then I said a few words and he got me in trouble and itwasbull-”  
  
“Dude,” Lúcio interrupted Jamison’s verbal spiral of thoughts this time. He was pretty good at doing that.  
  
“From what you’re telling me, I’m kind of getting a “ _no, we didn’t actually talk_ ” message coming across.” 

Jamison locked eyes with him, and Lúcio didn’t look away when he did.

“I thought you were supposed to be on my side...” Jamison began with a grumble, feeling even worse today now that Lúcio had put the perspective on the matter he’d been trying to suppress internally, the kind of perspective that confirmed that he was probably in the wrong.

Lúcio shrugged in response.

“What can I say? I’m a peaceful person, and you need more friends. You should stop chasing off everyone 5 minutes into meeting you; me and Hana can only handle you so much anyways.”

Jamison shot him a steely glance, defensive again.  
  
“I have more friends than just you and Hana” 

The shrug greeted him again.  
  
“If you say so. Still, kiss and make up. It’ll be good for you to not have another person who hates you in the school, at least.” 

That thought, Jamison reluctantly accepted, was true at least. It wasn’t that he went out of his way to be intentionally aggravating or overly aggressive, sometimes he just wasn’t the best at understanding when he was taking things too far with people.  
As a result, the number of people who’d been able to deliver him an ass-kicking was not anywhere near the number of people who’d have _liked_ to be able to deliver an ass-kicking.

And, the new guy did look pretty big and intimidating. When it came down to it, Jamison was certain that his handful of friends would have his back no matter how messy things got, but even with that in mind, he felt bad that he might’ve just accidentally dragged them down into trouble with him.

Resigned now to the obvious course of action, although begrudgingly so, Jamison re-focused his attention back on Lúcio.  
  
“You’re a real peacekeeper sort of bloke, you know that right?” 

Lúcio just smiled his beaming, white-toothed smile back in response.  
  
“Just tryin’ to keep you out of trouble, Rat.”

 

* * *

 

Jamison took a long inhale, then paused briefly, before exhaling and letting smoke drift past his lips.

Leaning against the gate at the far back of his school, surrounded by a few trees where the boundary of the school intersected with the back of a forest, Jamison felt incredibly anxious and twitchy.  
By the time that his math class had finished and lunch had begun, his mood had declined enough to the point that he decided it'd be best if he weren't around his friends for the moment.

And so, with careful attentiveness to the patrols of the teachers and the presence of any students who might have a grudge against him, Jamison had quietly slipped outside of the designated student areas; past the teaching buildings, taking care to stay out of the line of sight of any locations where he knew teachers would be able to see him, Jamison crept like a thief into his own, isolated area.

He knew that if he ever got caught heading to his little relaxing place, and especially if he got busted smoking within school, the teachers would be forced to monitor him so strictly that there'd be no chance of him ever getting a break to catch some peace when things became too much for him – and that just wasn’t an option. Sometimes the days were a bit too intense, and he needed to escape for a little while. He didn't think that was too unreasonable.

So he stayed cautious, snuck off only when he needed to, and now here he was, leaning against a forest fence and having a smoke; ignoring the guilt that his recent attempt to quit had ended even sooner than the last 20 attempts had.

He sighed heavily, feeling a slight but familiar wave of disappointment, and took a few steps forward towards the trees closer to the school, so that he’d be able to see through some of the branches, without making himself particularly visible from the distance that he was at.

From his vantage point, he could see occasional groupings of students spread across buildings, relaxing at desks, or the occasional loners eating alone. Some of the younger students sprinted around in a rabbit-like state of excitement, often to the scorn of their seniors.

His own group of friends didn’t seem to be around within his field of view, so he could only guess that they were either off in a detention because of some sort of misdemeanour, or that they were in the process of engaging in a misdemeanour that would soon result in a detention.

The thought made him snigger softly.

A darting movement accompanied by some yelling dragged his attention quickly off elsewhere, and he scanned the area for the source; soon finding himself staring at the sports fields nearby – proportionately close, compared to the rest of the school.

While he couldn’t very well see much detail or what was going on, the sight before him was as plain as day. The massive transfer kid seemed to have taken to the sports area with a few of the other senior students; and it seemed that he was living up to his hulking form's advantages by demolishing another team in a game of football.

Despite a few extremely loud yells and some boisterous chanting going on, Jamison didn’t really have a clue what was happening. He’d never really been one for sports.  
As some of the other seniors jogged up to clap the giant on the back and show some typical over-the-top physical affection, he couldn’t help but feel irrationally bitter and angry.

He took another deep drag of his cigarette, feeling his muscles relax, but becoming more frustrated by his unrelaxed state of mind.

_Making friends, are we? Yeah, good for you_.

 

* * *

 

As the day rolled to the dull conclusion of classes, Jamison reluctantly said his goodbyes to his friends. Whilst he was by no means a fan of the schooling system itself, being able to interact with his friends was greatly important to him; and as he now prepared to make the steady trek back to his house on foot, he knew that he should’ve been more attentive to them today rather than moping about with his own issues.  
He began to walk through the school’s exterior parking lot, feeling more than a little guilty all in all about the way that the entire day had played out.

_I’ll have to make it up to them tomorrow,_ he thought to himself with determination; a wisp of thought in his head already springing to life, detailing all of the ways that he’d be able to do something nice for his friends and ensure that their enduring love for him would continue-

Suddenly with a short lurch, Jamison found himself in a sudden burst of pain as he came to the realisation that he was now seated firmly on gravel, his backside smarting roughly as he looked up incredulously at whatever had just knocked him out of his train of thought; an occurrence which was simply happening far too often today, he decided. 

He hadn’t felt winded when he fell on his ass, but as the hulking form of the transfer student turned to face him, Jamison suddenly experienced all of the breath leaving his lungs in a huff, and the helpless feeling he got from it was almost the next-best thing.

As the giant turned around expectantly, he watched as a look of confusion filled his face, before his eyes shot downward and found him. Slowly, the look of confusion was replaced with a disdainful, neutral expression.  
Jamison swallowed uncomfortably.

“Something you wanted?” Growled out the heavy voice, a thick, dark tone which rumbled heavily and made Jamison’s legs feel weak; deterring him from attempting to stand for now.  
  
Jamison had been mentally preparing how he’d approach and talk to the guy to make amends, but somehow this was not by any stretch the situation and sentence that he'd imagined would start off their dialogue. In his mind, he’d always gotten the jump on the unsuspecting bear-man, leaving him with the opportunity to fluster out an apology without having to force himself to spend any excess time on uncomfortable small talk and pleasantries, which he was objectively terrible at. 

Clearly, this exchange was not going to go down the way he’d been planning so carefully. 

“Uh, I didn’t want for you to knock me on my ass so soon. I’d figured you’d make friendly with your jock buddies some more before you decided to give us a beating.”

While he’d been hoping for some sort of smirk or positive response to his dark joke, it seemed the monstrous figure wasn’t in any mood to humour his wittiness at the moment. Instead, his eyes only narrowed slightly; the murky expression on his face unwavering.  
  
Right. No bullshit, then.  
Jamison decided he might live longer if he were more straight to the point.

“Yeah, well, sorry. I tripped up. You’re pretty inconspicuous apparently, and I guess I didn’t see you.”

While there wasn’t any laugh like Jamie would’ve hoped for, the single cocked eyebrow served to help make his terrifying conversation partner a bit less scary.  
He wasn’t expecting the hand that was loosely pushed towards him from above; a massive meat-hook that could crush him in an instant. He managed to suppress a cringe at having such a huge, terrifyingly strong limb so close to his personal space, but after looking to confirm the expression on the giant’s face hadn’t changed, he put his own hand (proportionally tiny, he noted) up against it, and attempting to give a brief introductory shake.  
  
Immediately, he found himself on his feet before he could blink, dragged aloft without any real effort on his companion’s side – not even a stray blink to show that he'd expended any sort of energy. Internally, he was left both freaked out by the display of strength, and slightly embarrassed at the fact that he’d misread the gesture so hugely.

_Of course he didn’t want to shake your hand while you’re on the ground, idiot._

Now that he was up close and personal with the strange fellow, Jamison had free rein to inspect his face openly.

Height and body aside, all of his features were _thick_. His eyebrows were large, but proportionate to his wide eyes and broad nose. A vertical eyebrow piercing stretched a short distance above his left eye, the black double-beaded style contrasting with the silver metallic bull ring that pierced his septum – stretched slightly larger than standard size, from the looks of it.

Much like the contrast of his piercings, the high ponytail he wore was bleached to the colour of snow, whilst the roots of the shaved sides of his head were comparatively much darker.  
Jamie was shocked by how surprisingly handsome and composed his appearance was, now that he was able to see him in detail. Looking back to his eyes-

_Oh shit_.  
  
The giant’s eyes looked both curious and amused, and Jamison realised with a horrified sinking feeling in his gut that he must’ve been staring for quite a while.

“You know,” the deep rumbling began.  
  
“For someone who called me a voyeur and a pervert only a few hours ago, you’re staring pretty hard. And, I don’t think I said you could hold my hand, did I?”

With a start, Jamison realised that there hadn’t been pressure on his hand since he’d been pulled to his feet; and instead, he’d been gripping onto the massive pointer and middle-finger digits for the entire time that he’d been assessing his counterpart's looks.  
  
Pulling his hand back quickly, as if burned, he lowered his eyes and set his sight on the ground, trying to cover the disgusting blush that he felt traitorously creep across his cheeks.

He couldn’t tell if his embarrassment became more intense, or slightly relieved, when a hearty chuckle broke the silence; deep and vibrant, almost as easy to read as when Hana laughed.

“You know, you’re pretty hopeless aren’t you?”

Jamison felt a quick burst of annoyance spring to life within him at the remark, and decided to quickly force out his apology before he lost his nerve.

“Stop making fun! I was gunna apologise to you about what happened, I felt bad.”  
  
He rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably, already hating showing brief vulnerability like this.  
  
“I was pissed because you laughed at me. You’re probably not a pervert I guess, and if you’re a voyeur then that’s okay too. Whatever gets you off. I don’t judge.”

He finally rose his face to look at him, and saw that the expression that greeted him was much more mirthful now. After a brief silence, another laugh punctuated the air.

“What, is that where you’re stopping? Jeez, that’s gotta by far be the weirdest apology that anyone’s ever given me before. There wasn’t even an “ _I’m sorry_ ” mixed in there anywhere.”

Jamison felt frustrated that his apology was being rejected. He wasn’t gunna spell out the way that he was feeling to some random bloke he’d only met a few hours ago!

“Yeah well, I didn’t hear ya apologising to me!" He started, with a sudden intensity.  
"You acted like a real dog to me before, so I’m not even sorry anymore!”

The transfer boy just stared at him weirdly, leaving him feeling a bit self-conscious, admittedly.

“Kid, you’re weird.”

“...Yeah, I know."

"..."

"I’m Jamie, by the way.”

“Right. I’m not sorry either, if you were wondering, kid. Bye”

With that, Jamison watched him take a few steps over to a large, black bike that Jamison hadn't noticed before. With a slight effort, be began to pull on a helmet that’d been left hanging from one of the handlebars - before forcing his head into it, with a few shakes to adjust the fit.

“So, I'm guessing that's your bike, huh? Looks pretty cool, I guess. Maybe you’re more of a jock then I had you pegged for, though.”

The hulking figure paused briefly, then continued onwards through the motions of setting up his bike, as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

“Come on, don’t be an ass! You haven’t even told me ya name!”

That, at least, managed to turn that massive head head his way – although now that a bike helmet was situated atop it, he couldn’t exactly tell what sort of expression he was facing up against.  
He heard the small sound of a muted huff, and a few tremors rack the huge guy’s body.  
  
Jamison's blush returned when he realised that he was being laughed at, again.

“Take it easy, Jamie. I’ll see you around.”

Jamison jumped back a little from the loud revving of the engine, only narrowly avoiding falling back down on his ass again.  
The hulking figure turned and shifted his weight, then took off at a speedy pace; dodging through the carpark until he was out of Jamison's sight, although it'd be a little while before the loud sounds of an engine disappeared from Jamison’s ears completely.

In the meanwhile, he was left standing in a small cloud of dust, which had already begun to settle.

For not the first time that day, Jamison felt small, confused, and completely in over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh I'm sorry this took so long to publish! I had exams and then had to move around a bit, but now that I'm finished all of that, I've had time to finish and put this second chapter out.  
> I have some really fun plans for what I'm going to do with this fic overall, there are probably going to be some dark sections mixed throughout it because I'm not a fan of blindly happy stories, but I'm hoping to have fun along the way in any case!
> 
> I hope that you enjoyed this chapter, and as usual if you have any tips feel free to drop a comment! (or just drop a comment to say anything I'm cool with whatever :D)


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